"Doesn't sound like much of an afterlife," Diego said. "I like the idea of harps and angels better."
Ronnie said, "How do you know it's not going to be pitchforks and demons?"
Diego shrugged. "Couldn't be much worse than Afghanistan."
Nick said, "Let's think about this. Why would Ephram set this up? Leaving clues about this place in the scroll, only to tell us there's nothing here when we find it?"
"There's something else here," Selena said.
She brushed a layer of dirt and dust from the stone.
"I think it's a map."
"I can't see that it does us any good."
"That's because we don't understand it yet. That's Solomon's seal above the writing. It's a riddle you have to figure out if you want to get closer to wisdom. When Ephram writes wisdom, I think he means Solomon. So what the message says is that Solomon is with his consort in the queen's land."
"Because people associate wisdom and Solomon together?"
"Yes."
"Who was Solomon's consort?"
"He's supposed to have had over a thousand wives."
"I wonder what he was taking?" Diego said. "We knew that, we'd all get rich."
Selena ignored him. "The story of Solomon is in the Bible, in Kings. According to that version, the wives were foreigners. God told Solomon not to marry them because they would corrupt him with false gods. Solomon didn't listen. He seems to have been very attached to them. He began worshiping other gods and setting up temples for his wives to their gods. As punishment, God told him his kingdom would be scattered after his death and separated into different tribes."
"So who was his consort? If he had a thousand wives, how do we know which one the stone is talking about?"
"We have to think about it. It could be…"
Nick interrupted her. He held up his hand. "Everybody get quiet. I heard something."
They listened. "Vehicles," Ronnie said. "More than one."
"Coming up the valley," Diego said. "Now they're stopping."
"They'll be down at the foot of the slope" Nick rubbed his chin. "A four wheel drive might make it up here."
"Who'd know we're here?" Selena asked.
"Could be an Arab military patrol. Or maybe it's Al-Bayati. Get some pictures while we take a look."
Selena took out her phone and began taking pictures of the stone.
"Come on," Nick said.
They emerged from the darkness of the chamber into late afternoon light. The sun had reached the horizon and the sky was spread wide with red and vermillion streaked with black, as though the world was burning.
Nick moved with the others through the bushes to the edge of the plateau. They looked down at the valley floor. Six vehicles idled at the base of the slope. Two were pickups with heavy machine guns mounted in the back.
"That's not an Arab patrol," Ronnie said.
"They're getting ready to drive up the hill."
They went back to where Selena waited for them by the column.
"We have company," Nick said.
"Arabs?"
"There are no army markings. The Saudis don't use trucks like that. It has to be Al-Bayati."
"What do you want to do?"
"Wait until after it's dark and leave. There's nothing more for us here."
The trucks began to labor up the hill in low gear.
"Too late," Diego said. "Here they come."
CHAPTER 34
Major Dov Yosef knocked on the open door of Colonel Cohen's office and went in.
"You wanted to see me?"
"The Americans are up to something. Sit down, Dov."
Dov sat. "What are they doing?"
"I just got a heads up from Mossad. Last night they sent a stealth helicopter into Saudi Arabia from one of their carriers stationed in the Gulf of Aden. It touched down briefly in the Habala Valley near the border with Yemen, then returned to the ship."
"An insertion," Dov said.
Cohen nodded in agreement. "Can't be anything else. The question is why insert a team into that part of the country? There's nothing of any importance there."
"They must be looking for something."
"I think they're looking for Solomon's tomb and the Temple artifacts."
"How were they detected?"
"Luck. We have a Saar 4 surveillance ship observing the American carrier group. They picked it up. Otherwise we'd never have seen it."
"If there's something there, we can't let them have it. It belongs to Israel. It's our sacred heritage."
"Yes."
Cohen paused. Dov waited while his CO thought it through. "Can we put a team on site?"
"There are no units in that area. We'd have to use an airdrop and it's certain to be detected by the Saudi air defenses. Even with their technology, the Americans were lucky."
"It would be difficult on such short notice. But we can't let them escape with whatever it is they find."
"Assuming they find anything."
"There's another option," Colonel Cohen said.
"Which is?"
"Wait until the extraction, intercept their chopper and force them down where we can make sure they're not carrying something they shouldn't."
"Force down an American helicopter? What if they decide to treat us as hostile? It would go badly."
"That would be a mistake," Cohen said.
"It wouldn't do us any good to shoot them down. Besides, relations are bad enough with Washington as it is."
"Politicians never change. It's been that way since the days of the pharaohs."
"We're still in the days of the pharaohs. They just don't wear fancy headdresses or build pyramids anymore."
"No, now they build libraries named after them," Cohen said.
Dov laughed. "What are we going to do about the Americans?"
"Keep an eye on them. I've already requested that one of our satellites be tasked to observe the area."
"How soon?"
Cohen looked at his watch. "It should be coming up now."
He tapped a key. The satellite picture appeared on his computer screen.
"There it is. The light's going. We won't be able to see much in another half an hour."
The light was still good enough for the two Israeli officers to see the Americans. One of them was on top of the hill, next to one of the rock columns. Three more crouched at the edge of the slope, looking down at a half-dozen vehicles below.
"You said the Americans came in on a helicopter. What are those trucks doing there?"
"Hang on a minute."
Cohen entered a few more keystrokes. The picture appeared on a large wall monitor.
"Mechanicals. Two heavy machine guns," Dov said. "That's not a Saudi patrol. Rebels?"
"Let me zoom in."
The camera lens on the satellite bore down on the six trucks and men standing outside the vehicles. The resolution was good. One of the men looked up at the sky as if he could sense the satellite looking back at him.
Dov swore. "Ben zona! I know him. That's Al-Bayati. He's a puppet for Tehran, one of our problems in Lebanon."
"He must be after the same thing as the Americans."
"He's getting back in the truck," Dov said. "They're going to drive up the slope. Go back to the top of the hill."
The camera zoomed out. They watched the four Americans. Now they were all at the edge of the slope.
"They're armed," Cohen said. "Looks like MP5s or something similar."
"They're going to need more than that against those machine guns. What do you want to do?"
"Do? Nothing, except watch what happens. Maybe they'll do us a favor and take care of our Lebanese friend for us."
"You don't think we should intervene?"
"Unless you can get a unit on site in the next five minutes, I don't think we can. Even if we could, it's in Saudi Arabia. That presents a problem."